It's time to give wannabe thugs a way out of gang life

When I was this paper's police reporter I was immersed for a time in gangsters, cops, parole agents, etc. Granted, that was years ago, and it didn't make me an expert on anything.

Michael Fitzgerald

When I was this paper's police reporter I was immersed for a time in gangsters, cops, parole agents, etc. Granted, that was years ago, and it didn't make me an expert on anything.

But considering the Marshall Plan is not scheduled to roll out the real experts until next Friday, I'd like to chip in my two cents on crime, gangs and gun violence.

When I first started covering crime, I thought Stockton gangs were hardened criminals, mini-Mafiosi run by sociopaths. Menaces to society.

I thought gun violence such as drive-by shootings was all about criminal competition over drugs or other organized criminal enterprises, or sheer nihilism.

Sometimes it was. But mostly Stockton gangsters were kids. Some were truly bad. Others weren't totally hard core but still had long rap sheets.

Still others, well, they were younger than I expected - most younger than 24 - and most, I finally came to believe, had another attribute, one which I didn't anticipate.

They were afraid.

Many joined gangs because they grew up in a neighborhood with a stark choice: join a gang or be a victim of a gang. Or fall prey to street thugs.

Some got guns because they feared real enemies who had guns. If you have a gun, nobody messes with you. Especially if you've shot or killed somebody. Or so the thinking goes.

Though they were armed, impulsive, party-mad, deep into the drug trade, or other illegal stuff, and held others in their thrall, they weren't rich or powerful.

Many hated their lives.

They had lost family. Or close friends. They saw no future. Many actually felt marked for death. Some seemed to believe they couldn't walk to the end of the block without risking being shot.

Imagine that.

Another thing. When the motives for many of their shootings came out, they were incredibly petty. Often there was no grand battle for supremacy over gang rivals or internal power struggle to be a gang's capo di Tony Soprano, like on television.

The shootings were over minor ripoffs, teen heartbreak and slights. Disrespect.

I'm big on individual responsibility. So, like most people, I held gangsters responsible for their choices. If they got hauled off to prison, I lost no sleep.

I still feel that way, to a degree. Especially since my house has been twice burglarized, my car twice smash-n-robbed, my bicycles stolen, my fence repeatedly graffitied, etc.

There's no doubt certain people - certain cultures, even - are addicted to violence and self-gratification. That's on them.

But that individual responsibility thing cuts both ways. I realized that Stockton has failed them, too.

A city - a civilization - supposedly ensures the public health and safety; in return it expects adherence to its laws.

Today's gangsters grew up after Stockton's crack cocaine epidemic of the late 1980s and early 1990s. Some have never known a time of general public safety or a home with safe streets.

They don't have faith in the law, or believe cops protect them, or that government cares if they live or die. Which is true, in a way, if you look at who the murder victims are.

And we have been OK with that.

We cannot allow Stockton to be an analog to the segregated Southern cities of the early 1960s. Segregated not by color but by social contract, a city split between those who receive government's basic protection and assistance and those who do not. Such a city carries the seed of its own destruction.

The solution to Stockton's crime problem must be, broadly speaking, two things.

Using crime data and gang intel, the cops ought to get right in the worst offenders' faces. They ought to deliver the message that gun violence is a deal-breaker.

If punks use guns, the SPD and all their multiagency allies should ruthlessly bust everybody for everything and send the worst guys away for a long time.

But they - we - ought to offer the others a way out, too.

The police should make their streets safe. Public Works should upgrade their neighborhoods. The council should fund after-school programs.

And so on. Gangsters should be given the chance to leave the life, go back to school, vocational ed, get help finding a job - whatever they need to get with the program.

Yeah, yeah, it takes money. I said at the outset I had an opinion about the Stockton Knife & Gun Club, not where to find a golden goose.

Anyway, I believe there's a nucleus of real bad actors out there, and others ranging from half-bad to wannabes. We ought to hammer the worst and offer the others a chance.